Adelphi University’s roots reach back to 1863 and the founding of the Adelphi Academy, a private preparatory school in Brooklyn, New York. The Academy was incorporated in 1869 and its Board of Trustees was charged with establishing a first class institution for the broadest and most thorough training, and to make its advantages as accessible as possible to the largest numbers of our population. The school quickly gained a reputation for its innovative curriculum, particularly in physical culture and early childhood education.
The appointment of Charles H. Levermore, PhD, as the head of the Academy in 1893 was an important moment in Adelphi’s history. Realizing the city of Brooklyn was without a liberal arts college, Levermore seized the opportunity to establish Adelphi College. Through the efforts of Timothy Woodruff, former lieutenant governor of New York State and future president of Adelphi’s Board of Trustees, Adelphi College, with 57 students and 16 instructors, was granted a charter—one of the earliest charters granted to a coeducational college by the Board of Regents of the State of New York—on June 24, 1896. Henceforth, degrees issued bore the seals of Adelphi College and of the University of the State of New York and were signed by the officers of the College and by the chancellor and the secretary of the University. For the next 25 years, the Academy remained intact yet separate from the College.
Over the course of the next 100 years Adelphi grew and changed significantly. In 1929, Adelphi University became the first private, coeducational institution of higher education on Long Island. Since that time, more than 100,000 students have passed through our doors, leaving their mark on the University and the world beyond.
Today, Adelphi is thriving. Our colleges and schools include the College of Arts and Sciences; the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology; the Honors College; the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business; the Ruth S. Ammon College of Education and Health Sciences (comprised of the School of Education and the School of Health Sciences); the College of Nursing and Public Health; the School of Social Work; and the College of Professional and Continuing Studies. We have reinvigorated our academic community and invested in our future. Our faculty is leading the way to ensure that our students receive the finest education in the region and that Adelphi continues to serve as a vital resource to our local communities. As we turn our strategic plan into a vision for our future, the campus community has come together to accomplish mutual goals centered on scholarship and student achievement.
While universities around the country have been eliminating faculty, Adelphi has hired more than 280 new professors since 2001. Current full- and part-time faculty total 956, with a student/faculty ratio of 10:1. To ensure that our scholars have the resources needed to reach their goals, we have invested millions of dollars in infrastructure. We have renovated our facilities; upgraded our technology and created smart classrooms; dramatically improved our libraries—both facilities and collections; and invested in new equipment, including state-of-the-art lasers for two new physics laboratories, an atomic scanning microscope and a nuclear magnetic resonance machine for the chemistry program, new pianos from Steinway & Sons, and enhanced digital music facilities to support our music and performing arts programs. An ambitious campus expansion project has, over the last decade, resulted in the completion and opening of the Adele and Herbert J. Klapper Center for Fine Arts with space for painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics; the Center for Recreation and Sports, containing gyms and an indoor track; the Performing Arts Center (AUPAC) includes a 500-seat Concert Hall and additional performance, rehearsal and classroom space for music, theatre and dance; an outdoor sports complex; a complete renovation of Woodruff Hall with a modern exercise room, pool, teaching gym and classroom; the Alice Brown Early Learning Center; and additional parking.
Scholars throughout the University are making significant contributions to their disciplines. In recent years, Adelphi faculty members have been recognized as Fulbright and Hartford Scholars, and have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The School of Social Work is accredited for the maximum time that the accrediting agency grants. In fact, our School of Social Work was reaccredited with no recommendations for improvement by the Council on Social Work Education’s site evaluation committee, and the School’s self-study document so impressed the council that it is now used as a model in reaccreditation training sessions for other programs.
Currently, more than 8,100 students are thriving in our classrooms, in our programs, on our sports fields at the main Garden City campus and at centers in the NYC area, Hauppauge, and Poughkeepsie. Our students have gone on to achieve awards and national recognition for their scholarship, service and leadership.
Adelphi also seeks to serve its locality, state and nation through the research and practice of its faculty; the strengthening of ties between the professional schools and community; the staging of distinguished cultural events at its campuses; and most essentially, the education of a generation of future leaders and informed citizens, professionals, and community members.
7,406 2023-2024 academic year
total students enrolled at Adelphi University
Total Undergraduate Students 4,891 233 5,124
Total Graduate Students 1,173 1,109 2,282
11:1 based on Fall 2023 data
student to faculty ratio means our professors can adopt a personalized approach to learning
2,351 between July 2022 and June 2023
total degrees awarded at Adelphi University.
National Recognition
Wonderful things are happening at Adelphi, and others are taking notice. We’re proud to be nationally recognized by well-respected national publications and educational organizations.
Ranked a U.S. News & World Report Best College
[U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges: National Universities 2024]
For a sixth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Adelphi University on Long Island as a Best College among national universities. Adelphi’s ranking jumped significantly after U.S. News changed its methodology, placing greater emphasis on outcome measures like graduation rates and social mobility.
- Best College, moving up 19 spots to No. 163
- Best College in First-Year Experiences, jumping 17 spots to No. 32
- Best Value School, rising 35 spots to No. 67
- Top Performer on Social Mobility, surging an unprecedented 85 spots to No. 55
Highly Ranked Programs
U.S. News & World Report also released its 2024 rankings for Best Undergraduate Programs. The following programs have been ranked in the top 300 among 2,000 programs in the United States.
- Best Undergraduate Nursing Program (since 2022)
- Best Undergraduate Psychology Program
These programs were ranked in earlier years:
- Best Part-Time MBA Program (2022)
- Best Graduate School for Psychology (2022)
- Best Graduate School for Speech-Language Pathology (2020, the most recent ranking)
- Best Clinical Psychology (Doctorate) Program (2020, the most recent ranking).
Three Adelphi Grad Programs Among Tops in 2024 U.S. News & World Report Rankings
U.S. News & World Report has recognized three Adelphi University graduate programs that deliver outstanding academic experiences.
- U.S. News ranked the Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) program, offered by Adelphi’s College of Nursing and Public Health (CNPH), among the top MSN programs for 2024. CNPH also was listed among the Best Public Health Schools for 2024, for its Master of Public Health program.
- In addition, USN&WR included the part-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) program at Adelphi’s Robert B. Willumstad School of Business among its top graduate programs for 2024.
- The Princeton Review ranks Adelphi among the Best Northeastern Colleges in 2024 and included our Robert B. Willumstad School of Business as a 2024 Best Business School.
